Pogon residencies within the Stronger Peripheries project
Since 2021, Pogon has been a part of the Southern Coalition network, which brings together 14 partners from 10 European countries. Through the Stronger Peripheries project, the network implements programs that provide support to professionals in the field of arts and culture. A special aspect includes collaborative strategies in artistic creation, so-called tandems, that offer artists the opportunity to produce a work of art through international mobility and cooperation, unhindered research and creative work, as well as the dissemination of work in partner countries. The local context, as well as the participatory approach, are a key part of the tandem’s methodology.
Pogon is the main producer of Tandem #7: Work and Happiness, within which the artistic organization 21:21 (Petra Hrašćanec and Ksenija Zec) and Vedrana Klepica are developing their original work on the theme of work and happiness. In late 2023 and early 2024, the artists will be taking part in research residencies in the Portuguese city of Santarém. In January and February 2024, the artists will take part in the residency in Jedinstvo. 21:21 and Vedrana Klepica will finalize their works in March, and the premieres are expected at the end of the month. The co-producers of Tandem #7 are the Portuguese performing arts network Artemrede, the municipality of Santarém and Teatro di Sardegna.
JANUARY: 21:21 (PETRA HRAŠĆANEC AND KSENIJA ZEC)
"Safe Chemistry" is a diptych with two thematically connected formats under the working titles "Dinner at 21" and "21 Degrees in This Room That Fell in Love". "Dinner at 21" serves as a laboratory for social practices that explores how a normal dinner for twenty-one participants can transform into a performance format. During the dinner, the audience is given an active role in initiating the plot. Personal details and themes are revealed in a moderated dialogue among all the participants. The solo "21 Degrees in This Room That Fell in Love " shifts the expected paradigm where the space remains still, and the body moves. With simple but impactful chemical processes, the room changes before the viewer's eyes, and the body in space creates a reactive response to significant spatial changes. It is as if the performer's inner self spills into the performance space and creates a changing landscape of a room in love.
21:21 is an artistic organization founded by two co-artists, Petra Hrašćanec and Ksenija Zec. Their collaborative efforts span across disciplines, yielding shared research and the creation of innovative performative technologies that explore the intersections of dance, theatre, and performance. The range of their works extends from traditional stage setups to installations in galleries, including a unique relationship with technology within the realm of body practice as the fundamental source of their art. Working and producing in the context of an independent art scene, 21:21 also creates projects that deal with audience development, principles of art education, and networking initiatives.
FEBRUARY: VEDRANA KLEPICA
The performance project "Relative Humidity" poses as its primary question how we deal with what we have left behind, and what we know cannot be regained. In recent years, we have witnessed a constant increase in already record-breaking temperatures and natural disasters (primarily storms and fires) which result in radical changes in biodiversity. "Relative Humidity" will attempt to identify the psychological and sociological patterns with which people cope with such a loss and adapt to a completely new environment, to the extent that they even accept it as something unchangeable in their lives, which gives the entire narrative an almost mythological weight.
Vedrana Klepica is a writer, playwright and theatre director. She has worked in various domestic theatre companies. Her dramatic texts have been performed on several continents. They have been translated into English, German, French, Spanish, and Polish, and published in several anthologies of dramatic texts. She has participated in numerous international festivals and residencies for playwrights and theatre authors.
The project "Stronger Peripheries: A Southern Coalition" is co-financed by the European Union through the Creative Europe program, with the support of the City of Zagreb and the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia.
